


On The Road Again: Fandom Discoveries

by ariedana



Series: On The Road Again [5]
Category: Take That
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-16
Updated: 2012-11-16
Packaged: 2017-11-18 19:14:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/564343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ariedana/pseuds/ariedana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Since Rob introduced Jason to Tumblr, his addiction to blogging has been growing steadily. Now it's time to take a look at something that he'd been hesitant to face since going online - his fans. But is it nearly as traumatic as he thought it would be? The second part of a stand-alone outtake from the series.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On The Road Again: Fandom Discoveries

All the boys were pretty tired after many hours of driving across the Plains states, so they decided to make an early night of it in the hotel. They were all hanging out in Gary’s massive suite (seemingly the “mistake” kept being made of confusing him with a US X Factor judge, which greatly helped his accommodations) and finding various ways of entertaining themselves.

Gary was busily listening to demo tracks and samples from studio techs he was interested in trying out for the new album, while Mark watched The Simpsons. Howard had cracked open his laptop and was immersed in Beatport whilst simultaneously cackling over Bart Simpson’s crass jokes. Rob was researching a theory he had read about regarding the origins of the Loch Ness Monster. And Jason was busily hunting and pecking his latest Tumblr posting.

In the time since Rob had introduced him to Tumblr, the boys had become increasingly amused by his slow descent into addiction. At first it started with a few rambling posts about the psychology of Glee and how the show encourages teens to live a more socially responsible lifestyle. Then he began reblogging posts about every liberal social cause under the sun. Then he became very interested in Kiva microloans after following John Green and got immersed in debates with several bloggers about their effectiveness.

Now it was very clear to him that he’d never be able to give Gary or Howard shit ever again about Tweeting during promo events or in the studio, because every time he wasn’t driving or sightseeing or attempting to sleep, he was on his phone using the Tumblr app. It was even cutting into his valuable reading time.

Eventually the typing slowed, then stopped. Jason looked thoughtful. He looked over at Rob.

“Hey Rob, do we have fans on Tumblr?”

Rob boggled for a minute.

“You mean you haven’t looked?” he asked. “I showed you how to search tags.”

“Gary told us to avoid looking for ourselves online….”

“Damn straight I did,” Gary broke in. “Listen and learn, Rob.”

“…and I’m a little bit nervous about it,” Jason continued. “I told you why I don’t want to go on Twitter. People are mean and perverted there.”

“Then why did I see you setting up a Twitter account with your fake name?” Howard broke in, suddenly intrigued.

“So I could connect it to my Tumblr,” Jay said, flushing. “Nobody still knows who I am. And none of you are allowed to follow me there. I know how your fans are. They’re as bad as CSI.”

“Someday you are going to have to explain your online logic to me,” Gary mumbled. “It’s like you DON’T want people to like you.”

Rob jumped in before Jason could take the opportunity to do so.

“Jay, you are aware you have fans, right? Like real ones.”

“Well, I assume that’s why I get jumped by mobs when I make the mistake of going shopping on Oxford Street, yes,” Jason said. “I can’t even go out on a date without people announcing it for me, and then the paps show up. I love that so much.”

Rob ignored the sarcasm.

“I think you need to get a new perspective on it,” he said. “Let’s take a look at the Take That tag.”

Of course the third post that they saw when they searched for the tag was a porn GIF involving two people going at it cowboy-style. Rob, Jason and Howard just boggled.

“Well, that’s a new interpretation of ‘Take That,’” Howard commented, tilting his head sideways to examine it from a new angle.

“But why is the guy wearing trainers?” Jason wondered.

“That’s the problem with tags,” Rob groaned. “A lot of unrelated content.”

But he continued scrolling and the boys saw a great variety of content. There were a ton of animated GIFs from their live shows, all the way back to the beginning. Some of which made them wince because they preferred to forget the clothes they wore back in the day, but it was a bit heartwarming to see how much people liked them, even if they were liked because of their lack of shirts.

Then there were people posting about song lyrics and how they had inspired them that day, and others saying things about what they hoped to see on the next album and tour. There was a very interesting secrets blog where people posted fantasies involving Take That, and shockingly most of them weren’t NC-17 rated. There seemed to be a continuing debate about whether the band was better or worse without Rob, but overall the posters seemed to respect both sides of the argument and gave valid points.

“There’s something I was told by someone online that out of 100 people, 90 of them love what you do,” Rob commented. “But it’s the 10 that you pay attention to.”

“That’s a good point,” Howard agreed. “I have to say I have a lot fewer people telling me how crap I am on Twitter than I expected. But when they do it bugs me for days.”

“Maybe it’s important to let the 90 have their say,” Jason said. “The 10 won’t like you no matter what you do.”

“See, you’re catching on!” Rob grinned as he typed “Jason Orange” into the Search Tags field.

Suddenly Jason was taking a trip down Memory Lane. WAY down Memory Lane. There seemed to be a picture of every day of his life, from baby pictures to him on the Hitman and Her to every single hairstyle he had since the band began. There seemed to be an ongoing discussion about the length of his hair and beard, and a long running thing Rob called a “meme” concerning Jason being a “hipster.”

“I didn’t know that I took my shirt off so much onstage,” he muttered.

But once again the sentiment was overwhelmingly positive. A bit much at times - Jason would never understand why women who had never actually talk to him would offer to have babies with him - but also very sweet. There were posts about how seeing him sing solo had inspired others to pursue things they had been afraid of, and others discussing what he might be reading or interested in. And it was a bit of an ego boost to hear so many people describe how beautiful he was.

“But you ARE beautiful!” Howard said when Jason commented on that.

Jason blushed and squeezed Howard’s hand.

“And that leads us to our next subject,” Rob said as he typed “Donage” into the search field.

“Donage?” Jason asked.

“That’s your ship name,” Rob replied, pointing at him and Howard.

“Ship name?” Jason said, a bit bumfuzzled. “I don’t have a ship.”

Rob shook his head.

“Suffice it to say that there are a lot of people who would like to see nothing more than you and Howard setting up house together and adopting lots of babies,” he said.

Howard and Jason watched in amazement as they saw seemingly every second spent together immortalized by people on Tumblr who clearly were very interested in that sort of thing.

“They got THAT much out of the kiss during Kidz?” Howard said after watching a slow-motion clip of the dance-off. “I’d hate to see what those guys would do with porn.”

“Just let me know if you want to test that,” Rob winked. “I always did want to make a sex tape.”

“That would be a sex tape of YOU,” Jason groaned. “Leave me out of your fantasies, please.”

“And DON’T get any ideas, Rob,” Gary interjected from the nearby bed. “That would not make for great promotion of the album.”

“You guys are no fun,” Rob groaned. “But you get the point, right? You two seem to have a special something that people pick up on. They have ships for the rest of us too, but Donage shippers are really passionate. If for some reason the two of you want to, um, explore things, there’s no one there saying it’s gross or disgusting. They would be thrilled.”

Jason still looked horribly uncomfortable. He had never liked having his personal life on display, especially since it seemed to be perfect for the front page of every red top.

“I don’t know if I could ever deal with that,” he said. “Remember how things went with Catherine after it ended up in the papers. With Howard, even hypothetically, it would be magnified a thousand times.”

“But if people support you, mate, you can’t lose,” Mark finally entered the discussion. “It’s embarrassing to end up in the tabs thanks to seeing someone. I should know. But in a week they’ll be interested in something else. Especially if your life is really boring. And yours is.”

“Thanks so much Markie,” Jay said, rolling his eyes.

“Some things are worth the risk,” Howard said, looking straight into Jason’s eyes.

Jason didn’t really know how to respond to that. He just looked back at Howard. And what his eyes said was, “I’ll think about it.”

“One more thing before we go,” Rob said, typing in the tag “Donage Wedding.”

Using GIFs from various events, live performances and even interviews, a group of fans had compiled a series of events that were supposed to memorialize the marriage of Jason and Howard. Including their wedding night.

“I don’t know what to think,” Jason said. “A big part of me feels like I should be creeped out. But it’s so….”

“…creative?” Howard asked.

“Exactly. And they all fit. How have we managed to look so besotted over the past 20 years and somehow never noticed?”

“Maybe it just takes awhile sometimes,” Mark commented, smiling at the two of them.

“Well this does give me a new perspective on things,” Jason said. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to go over and talk to them, because I really enjoy a quiet online life. All I want to do is talk about organic stuff and microloans and Glee for now. But it’s nice to be liked. Very nice. Worryingly so.”

“And it’s nice to know you’ll be supported no matter what,” Howard said, looking at Jason again.

The five of them lapsed into silence, finally broken up by Rob.

“Okay, enough of that,” he said. “If you want to see how fandoms can not be so nice sometimes, let’s go look at the Larry tag.”

“Larry?” Jason inquired.

“Ship name for Louis and Harry in One Direction,” Rob said.

Gary let out a huge groan.

“NO!!!!” he intoned.

“And I still want to know what a ship is,” Jason said. “I don’t own a ship!”

Rob shook his head again and sighed.


End file.
